Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) transformation using immature embryos.

Abstract

Wheat may now be transformed very efficiently by Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Under the protocol hereby described, immature embryos of healthy plants of wheat cultivar Fielder grown in a well-conditioned greenhouse were pretreated with centrifuging and cocultivated with A. tumefaciens. Transgenic wheat plants were obtained routinely from between 40 and 90 % of the immature embryos, thus infected in our tests. All regenerants were normal in morphology and fully fertile. About half of the transformed plants carried single copy of the transgene, which are inherited by the progeny in a Mendelian fashion.